“Reskilling” has the same ring in art as “reindustrialisation” does in geopolitics. After decades of jettison and outsourcing of expertise and craft, a new fad for the ornate and “made in X” now drives the art market as well as industrial policy. The CNC machine replaced the lathe, the hand, if not the eye, in the artist’s studio, and in so doing laid ground for a performance of nostalgia. 

What was Trump’s “clean coal”, then, and who’ll forge all this steel? Steven Claydon’s Decline and Fall, an aluminium and bronze eagle hanged off its own rope, is right on the nose. Apollinaria Broche’s ceramic flower and silver-plated cobwebs speak to a pastoral aesthetics now only available on Etsy. But a quaint wood, wax, and mirror room panel from Mathilde Albouy stakes a claim on a decorative tradition rejected long ago for more than a single reason. These “relics” must be as reactionary as they are futuristic.